Featured video

Description: A synthetic narcotic, fentanyl has been detected in an increasing number of illicit drug overdose deaths in Metro Vancouver. Many of the people who died were recreational and/or occasional users and don’t appear to have known they were ingesting fentanyl, as it is easily hidden in other drugs.

Loss of bird species points to environmental crisis: Report

Twenty of North America’s most common bird species have declined more than 50 per cent over the last 40 years, including the population of evening grosbeaks, above, down 78 per cent.

Photograph by: Ducks Unlimited
, Canwest News Service

EDMONTON - Common birds are in decline across the world, sending a clear signal there is something very wrong with the basic health of our environment, says a new report.

Twenty of North America’s most common bird species have declined more than 50 per cent over the last 40 years, says The State of the World’s Birds, released Monday at BirdLife International’s World Conference in Buenos Aires.

Around the world, one in eight bird species - 1,226 species in total - face extinction, largely due to loss of habitat and climate change.

Birds breeding in grasslands are fading fast: 15 of 25 species showed significant declines between 1980 and 1999, and an average decline of 1.1 per cent per year.

Even species familiar to every Canadian, such as the red-winged blackbird, are in trouble. “This species has declined at rates of 1 per cent per year in eastern and central U.S.A. - with even greater declines observed in Canada,” said the report.

On the Prairies, one of the heralds of spring is quietly disappearing. The killdeer, a white, brown and black bird with a famous distracting broken-wing act, is suffering a sharp drop in numbers.

The killdeer count has dropped an annual average of 2.5 per cent since 1968, said Jon McCracken, director of national programs for Bird Studies Canada, a non-profit organization dedicated to bird research and conservation.

There also have been strong declines in swallows, nighthawks, martins and others that feed on aerial insects, he added.

“Declines were present probably from four decades ago, but then all of a sudden, you’re seeing a much more pronounced decline, especially in the last decade or two,” McCracken said. “So whatever is happening out there is accelerating, which is not a good thing.”

A likely cause is changes to habitat, both in the breeding grounds here in Canada and in the wintering grounds further south.

“In Alberta, particularly, probably part of the declines may be driven by climate change,” McCracken said. “There have been increases in drought years, and climate change can also throw the seasonal timing of bird migration and nesting out of whack with the abundance of insects.”

The global population of northern bobwhites, once common in southwestern Ontario, has dropped 82 per cent over the last 40 years. The population of Evening Grosbeaks dropped 78 per cent over the same period and the Boreal Chickadee dropped 73 per cent.

Since the year 1500, the planet has lost over 150 bird species - an extinction rate far higher than the natural background rate, says the report.